BACK IN THE HIGH LIFE AGAIN

Well, you're never going to believe this but I finally got a full-time job yesterday.

I know, I know ... go me. It only took nine months.

(Uncle Bob waves through the confetti and red, white and blue balloons falling from the ceiling)

God bless America and all that shit.

It's a courier job where I drive a route across the tri-county area four times a day, stopping at banks and picking up their paperwork to take back downtown.

The money's decent enough, but I'm holding on to my DJ gigs as well since those are EEEEEASY money.

So Fridays are going to be a bitch, working from 7:30 a.m. until about 1:30 a.m. non-stop.

I think I can do it, but I feel REEEEAL sorry for anyone who makes a request late on Friday nights.

How did I get this job?

Well, as it turns out, the guy that hired me was a big fan of my newspaper column from a few years back and started quoting stuff I had written that I had completely forgotten about because I was a heavy smoker of the wacky weed back then.

I just sat there, grinning madly because that's what you're supposed to do in a job interview ... laugh and smile at everything the interviewer says like a lunatic.

Even when they're quoting you.

So he's all "When can you start? When can you start?"

Which makes me a bit nervous because I'm used to going on job interviews and being told I'm way overqualified for the job.

Like I am at this job.

Hell ... the guy never even took a look at my resume which I brought with me and held throughout the interview.

So I told him I'd call him back in the afternoon with a date that I could start.

Figuring "2007" was out of the question, I called him back and told him Monday.

Therefore, as the smarter portion of my readers may have already deduced ... I start Monday.

It's going to be weird ... leaving the house early on a weekday morning and not returning for eight hours.

I'm simply not used to that.

When in the hell will I nap?!?

One of the conditions of my employment are that I had to pass a drug test.

Luckily, I know quite a bit about drugs, having done all of them but heroin and crack over the years, so I figured I could pass the test as long as it was written and not oral. Because an oral test on drugs would find me waxing poetically on the time I went to see Pink Floyd on acid to the point where the person administering the test would probably flunk me.

Oh.

It wasn't that kind of test.

Nay ... it was the ol' "piss in the cup" test.

Now then ... I've had my share of shitty jobs over the years.

But I have NEVER had to be a piss juggler.

I feel sorry for these people, whose job it is to take warm cups o' piss and divide them into all these test tubes all day long.

I run down to the place immediately after my interview because ... trust me ... as a former druggie, there's no better feeling in the world than to be told you have to take a drug test and you know that you will pass it with flying colors.

Hell, the last beer I had was in June, for Pete's sake. That's how wild I am these days.

So I peel out of the parking lot of the interview, shooting gravel all over the building.

(It's okay to do this when you've just secured a courier position. It shows your new employer that you're goddamned serious about getting shit where it needs to be ON TIME, dammit.)

I get down to Piss Central.

I sit in a waiting room with crackheads who are holding their heads in their hands, KNOWING that the results of their piss tests are going to be positive and they're either going to be fired from their jobs or not hired.

While I'm all "I don't do druuuu-hugs! I don't do druuuu-hugs!"

The piss juggler who calls me back is F-I-N-E fine.

Therefore, this is going to be awkward.

Now I KNOW this hottie handles piss all day. It's her job.

But still ... in my warped mind, I have trouble handing a hottie a cup of my scorching hot piss ... now with new flavor crystals.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

So she gives me the instructions. Take the cup in the bathroom, pee to the blue line on the cup and do NOT flush the toilet.

Huh??

Why can't I flush the toilet?

It seems there's quite an epidemic of crackheads who smuggle baggies of their mama's piss in there, pour it in the cup, throw the baggie in the toilet and clog up the septic system.

Now, had the piss juggler been an old man with warts on his face, I may have been tempted to go number two while I was in there and not flush that for kicks.

Alas, it was a hottie who looked like she wore a Hooters outfit at night.

Soooo ... no dump.

I took the cup, peed in it, finished draining the monster in the toilet, went to flush it out of habit, stopped myself just before I flushed it and walked out with a cup o' piss and leaving a toilet full o' piss.

And while it's tempting to put something else in the cup ... like dirt from the bottom of your shoes, a dirty band-aid or a crack rock, I resisted the urge and left the pee-pee pure.

The piss juggler took the cup and started dividing it up into test tubes while I signed a few papers, stating that it was me who pissed in the cup and not my mama and that I didn't smuggle someone else into the bathroom behind the piss juggler's back to piss for me so I could continue on my journied path to Crack City where you breathe deep clouds of cocaine into your lungs and your blood runs cold for five minutes at a pop.

I then had to initial the tubes o' piss.

It's hard enough writing on the side of a plastic tube with a ball-point pen.

But when the tube is filled with your hot piss, it's ... I dunno. Creepy??

After initialing zee tubes, I was told to leave and that the results would be back in a few days.

Once again, it is sooo nice to not have to worry that your tests will come back with "FUCKING MARIJUANA SMOKER!!!" scrawled in black magic marker across them.

I whistled out the door, passing the moaning crackheads still waiting in the waiting room and winked at 'em.